Il racconto della lotta dell'autore contro l'ansia e la storia degli sforzi di scienziati, filosofi e scrittori per comprendere questa condizione. Fino a qualche decennio fa l'ansia non esisteva come categoria diagnostica. Oggi è la forma in assoluto più comune di patologia mentale ufficialmente classificata. Scott Stossel ci guida delicatamente nei meandri di una sofferenza tanto pervasiva, quanto ancora troppo spesso fraintesa. Attingendo dalla propria infinita battaglia contro l'ansia, l'autore presenta una storia straordinaria, allo stesso tempo intima e autorevole, degli sforzi compiuti per comprendere tale condizione da una prospettiva medica, culturale, filosofica ed esperienziale. Egli spazia dai primi resoconti medici di Galenoe Ippocrate, passando per le successive analisi di Robert Burton e Søren Kierkegaard, fino agli studi dei grandi scienziati del XIX secolo, come Charles Darwin, William James e Sigmund Freud, per arrivare infine alle più recenti ricerche dei neuroscienziati e dei genetisti. Riporta storie di personaggi eminenti, come di membri della sua famiglia che hanno lottato contro l'ansia. Descrive in modo vivido l'ansia umana - il suo impatto paralizzante, il suo potere devastante di immobilizzare - e nel contempo esplora i metodi adottati da chi ne soffre per gestirla e ridurla. In questo libro l'autore non rivela soltanto le infinite manifestazioni emotive e le angosce di questa condizione, ma anche le moltissime psicoterapie, le terapie farmacologiche e gli altri rimedi (talvolta bizzarri) che sono stati proposti per provare a contrastarla. Un'opera

Drawing on his own longstanding battle with anxiety, Scott Stossel presents a moving and revelatory account of a condition that affects some 40 million Americans. Stossel offers an intimate and authoritative history of efforts by scientists, philosophers, and writers to understand anxiety. We discover the well-known who have struggled with the condition, as well as the afflicted generations of Stossel's own family. Revealing anxiety's myriad manifestations and the anguish it causes, he also surveys the countless psychotherapies, medications, and often outlandish treatments that have been developed to relieve it.
Stossel vividly depicts anxiety’s human toll—its crippling impact, its devastating power to paralyze. He also explores how individual sufferers—including himself—have managed and controlled symptoms. By turns erudite and compassionate, amusing and inspirational, My Age of Anxiety is the essential account of a pervasive and too often misunderstood affliction.

A riveting, revelatory, and moving account of the author's history of anxiety and the history of the efforts by scientists, philosophers, artists, and writers to understand anxiety.

As recently as thirty years ago, anxiety did not exist as a diagnostic category. Today, it is the most common form of officially classified mental illness. Drawing on his lifelong battle with anxiety, Stossel gives us an astonishing history, at once intimate and authoritative, of the efforts to understand anxiety both from the medical and experiential perspective--from the earliest medical accounts (Galen, Hippocrates) through later observers (Robert Burton, Søren Kierkegaard) to the great nineteenth-century scientists who began to explore its sources and causes (William James, Freud). Included are accounts of individuals who struggled with anxiety (Charles Darwin, Samuel Johnson, Walker Percy), as well as afflicted generations of his own family. Stossel's portrait of anxiety reveals not only the complexities and anguish it produces--he also shows the myriad manifestations of anxiety, as well as the countless therapies, medications, and treatments that have been developed to counteract it. And always Stossel returns to anxiety's human toll--to its crippling impact, devastating power to paralyze, and yet at the same time how those who suffer from it find ways to manage and control it. My Age of Anxiety is an account at once humorous and inspirational, learned and empathetic, that exposes the terrain of an affliction that is pervasive and too often misunderstood. His masterly chronicle allows us to see the biological, cultural, and environmental factors that contribute to the affliction.

As founder of the Peace Corps, Head Start, the Special Olympics (with wife Eunice Kennedy Shriver), and other organizations, Sargent Shriver was a key social and political figure whose influence continues to the present day. This authorized biography, exhaustively researched and finely rendered by Scott Stossel (deputy editor of The Atlantic), reads like an epic novel, with “Sarge” marching through the historical events of the last century—the Great Depression, World War II, JFK's assassination, the Cold War, and many more. Sarge gives us a complete account of Shriver's life, as well as a thoughtful commentary on the Kennedy family, the Peace Corps, and United States and world history. It is a riveting and comprehensive reconstruction of a life that exemplifies what it means to be a true American.

Working for four presidents over six decades, R. Sargent “Sarge” Shriver founded the Peace Corps, launched the War on Poverty, created Head Start and Legal Services for the Poor, started the Special Olympics, and served as ambassador to France. Yet from the moment he married Joseph P. Kennedy’s daughter Eunice in 1953, Shriver had to navigate a difficult course between independence and family loyalty that tended to obscure his incredible achievements.

Scott Stossel, through complete access to Shriver and his family, renders the story of his life in cinematic detail. Shriver’s myriad historical legacies are testaments to the power of his vision and his ability to inspire others. But it is the colorful personality and indomitable spirit of the man himself—traits that allowed him to survive the Depression, WWII, and the Kennedy family—that will inspire readers today to expand the “horizons of the possible.”